Koto Bach by a hot koto man

January 19th, 2020

Tadao Sawai & Hozan Yamamoto
Koto Sebastian Bach (complete album download)

Fuck new wave, Berlin school, post-punk, electronica, avant-garde, and early-moog albums. Let’s listen to interpretations of classical music on traditional Japanese instruments.

This is the second “classical music but on koto” album that I’ve shared here. The first  was an album featuring Vivaldi’s Four Seasons performed on koto and shakukachi (Japanese bamboo flute). This, as the title suggests, is comprised entirely of koto-centric reworkings of Bach compositions, again with shakukachi (and some light jazz instrumentation) serving as accompaniment.

Like the Vivaldi album before it, this record is the work of Tadao Sawai and Hozan Yamamoto. This is actually their first album of classical covers, released a year prior to their 1969  Vivaldi album. Unlike their Vivaldi album, this actually got a release in America, coming out in the states in 1973 under the name J.S. Bach Is Alive And Well And Doing His Thing On The Koto. A ridiculous cover accompanied that ridiculous title change.

Yikes.

Sawai and Yamamoto would go on to collaborate on one more koto classical hybrid, Koto Amadeus Mozart, which was also released in 1969. From there, it looks like Sawai got more interested in koto reworkings of other genres, including some movie themes and Latin music. He apparently performed the theme to The Godfather on koto. I got to hear that shit.

I would also like to mention at this time that I think that Tadao Sawai was hot as hell. I mean, damn, look at this man.

He’s got them hungry eyes. Looking like he wants to take off those finger picks and show you what he can really do with those hands. Looking like he wants you to wait patiently while he properly disrobes from his traditional kimono before he can ravage you Edo style.  He’s got that big bad koto daddy look. He could…um…*desperately tries to think of a sexual koto double-entendre*….pluck me all night long if you know what I mean…and I think you do because that wasn’t very subtle at all was it?

I apologize for the sudden horny turn this post took. Enjoy the koto music.

Posted in Complete Albums | 2 Comments »

Happy belated New Year – here’s Moby remixing Aerosmith

January 12th, 2020

Around New Year’s I was showing a friend some other MP3 blog that shares remixes and b-sides. You know the one.

He agreed with me that it was totally lame that said MP3 blog not only shared tracks that are easily commercially available (sometimes on new vinyl even), but that the person behind the blog couldn’t even be bothered to do their own write-up about said tracks. I mean, it’s one thing to hook up a turntable to a PC, go through the sometimes arduous process of ripping a record to a digital format, cleaning it up, and then sharing it on the internet. It’s another to, let’s say, grab a rightfully forgotten piece of 90s electronica, rip it to a digital format, clean it up, properly tag it, upload it to a server that you paid for, and then write about said rightfully forgotten song.

That shit takes gumption.

Aerosmith
Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees) (Butcher Mix)
Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees) (Butcher Mix Edit)
Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees) (Moby Flawed Mix)
Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees) (Moby Fucked Mix)
Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhy.

Okay, first things first, there are four remixes here. The first two are by Joe “The Butcher’ Nicolo, the founder of Ruffhouse Records. They’re good examples of your standard remix. They take the basic structure of the song, mix it up a bit, throw in a few more beats, and add some other dance elements. They’re fine. I mean, they’re as fine as remixes to very sub-standard late-90s Aerosmith track can get, but whatever. They are what they are and they accomplish what they set out to accomplish.

Then, there’s the Moby remixes.

What the fuck.

I’m not surprised that Moby remixed these songs. This isn’t an 808 State/Yes situation. He was doing a lot of remix work for rock artists in the mid-to-late 90s. This was around the same time he did remix work for The Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Blur, and even Metallica. I’m more surprised with how he remixed them. I don’t think it’s really fair to even call these tracks remixes. I think the only thing he saves from the original versions in his remixes are Tyler’s vocals, and he even cuts and screws them to an (even more) unintelligible mess. These are less remixes and more like entirely new productions that just happen feature vocals by Steven Tyler with some short snippets of Perry’s guitar. They remind me Moby’s “Next To The E” or some of the more hardcore remixes of “Go.”

To be perfectly honest, I really don’t know what to think of them. I respect that they’re just so far out there and removed from the source material. He basically took an Aerosmith song (and not a very good one at that) and turned it into a hardcore techno track. I got to give props where props is due, that’s ballsy. But this is just grating on the ears. I thought for a second that maybe I was just getting too old for this shit, but I took a minute to listen to some other hardcore techno from the era and I still dug it. This is just too much. It’s too noisy, too much is going on, and the ballistic Tyler vocals snippets layered over it (especially over the “Fucked” mix) are just too intense.

But I still find myself respecting the tracks. He took a bad rock song and, through sheer force, determination and drum samples, turned it into a…less-than-average-but-not-entirely-horrible techno track. A techno track that, had I heard it in a club in 1997, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it and danced right through it. Good on him. Shit, it’s still better than anything on Aerosmith’s Just Push Play, and definitely superior to anything on the last few Moby records.

Sorry to start the new year off with Moby remixes of Aerosmith songs. I had something much better planned but my recordings still sound a bit too scratchy for my tastes. I’m going to run the record through the record cleaner one more time and hope for better results before I share them. I also have just, a near-literal ton of weird Japanese electronic and/or moog albums that I want to share, so you all have that to hopefully look forward too in the coming weeks and months.

 

 

Posted in Aerosmith, Moby, remixes | 2 Comments »

Osamu Shoji’s Star Wars – May the synths be with you

January 1st, 2020

I got to see Rise of the Skywalker this past Monday and thought it was just absolutely wonderful. It had some pacing and structure issues (so does Empire Strikes Back) but I loved how the movie blended the old with the new. I know it’s not the critical darling that The Last Jedi was, but I don’t care. It had a great story, fantastic character moments, and a terrific final scene. It was the first piece of any Star Wars media since Return of the Jedi that left me wanting immediately MORE Star Wars content. I’m back full-on Star Wars geek. If I had the room, I’d be buying stupid figures again. It inspired me to finally go through all the hurdles and download the “de-specialized” editions of the original trilogy so I can watch them again. It made me want to go back and watch the prequels even (well, maybe I’ll watch Attack of the Clones while doing some chores around the house). It pulled me back in.

There’s been a lot of negativity around this film and I’m still struggling to figure out why. It touched me in a way that no other film in the series had. I feel that a lot of the people who say they hate it can’t even express why. So much nitpicking tiny details, so many people demanding literally every single thing be answered and resolved in a way that matches their own head cannon. I don’t care about those things. I don’t overthink every tiny logistical and scientific detail of a Star Wars film (that’s what Star Trek is for). Yes, the movie is far from perfect, but most of its problems, pacing issues, seemingly random plot twists that don’t entirely hold up under scrutiny, deus ex machina force powers, sudden changes in character motivations, are in the other films too. I didn’t mind them then, I don’t understand why so many people mind them now.

I could keep going, but I already sound like a whiny defensive fanboy so I’ll finish by saying this; the movie made me happy. It hit all the nostalgic beats I wanted. It gave me new things to love. It reminded me why I love this franchise so much. I hope that it’s the sign of more greatness in future installments.

And if you want to comment about how much I’m wrong don’t fucking bother because this is my blog and I won’t approve them. If you have legitimate, interesting criticism of the film, I probably agree with you so there’s no need for you to share it here. If you want to whine about how “Ben Solo deserved better” or some other wanky bullshit, take your negativity to Twitter. That’s what everyone else does these days anyways.

Osamu Shoji’s Star Wars (Complete Album Download)
Buy hey, Twitter isn’t all bad! Today Twitter user @keepingitpeel sent me a link to a blog post about an all-synthesizer Star Wars album, and he asked if I had it.

Of course I do. And I’m just fucking shocked and disappointed with myself that I somehow never got around to sharing it here. Starting off the new year by fixing that mistake right now.

Star Wars by Osamu Shoji was released in Japan only in 1978. It’s not the only synthesizer arrangement of music from Star Wars (hell, it’s not the only one from Japan that came out that year) but it’s my favorite by leaps and bounds, thanks to the wonderful work of Mr. Shoji.

I have probably written more about Osamu Shoji more than anyone else has in English. When he sadly passed away in 2018, I put up a obituary of sorts on my other blog. He was an utterly amazing talent that took the synthesizer sound to places that others simply hadn’t before. Wendy Carlos proved that synthesizer music could sound like actual music, she made it commercially viable. Shoji built on her work to show that synthesizers could be fun, exploiting sounds and styles that were impossible on traditional instruments. It’s electronic music fused with 70s funk and jazz sensibilities. His best stuff just has an indefinable bounce. It’s just groovy, man.

His sense of goofy fun definitely comes across in his renditions of music from Star Wars. Like I said, there were many electronic takes on the Star Wars theme in the years immediately following the release of the film. A lot of the lesser-known ones failed to catch on because they just didn’t do all that much with the source material. They tried too hard to recreate the sound and feel of the original without adding anything to it.

In America, the most famous reworking of the Star Wars theme has to be by Meco, whose disco version of the main theme was actually a number-one hit single when it first came out. But I feel that had a lot more to do with the combined crazes of disco and Star Wars than it did with the actual quality of Meco’s work. I like Meco (really) but his Star Wars theme is little more than the regular Star Wars theme with a disco beat and some added instrumentation layered upon it.

Shoji takes the Star Wars theme and just fucking goes, man. Robot laughter sounds? Sure why not. A wah-wah bass back-beat? Damn straight. A funky breakdown? You better believe it. Like a good jazz musician, Shoji throws in his own flourishes and touches to the theme, all while not deviating from it too much. It always sounds like the theme. He doesn’t let his ego get the best of him. He knows why people are here and delivers what they want. He diverges a bit more on “Throne Room” but the key moments are still there, weaving them in and out with his own elements. And that funky beat keeps the groove constant.

Shoji really lets himself go wild when he gets to the Cantina Band music though. First he plays it through in a relatively standard way, again he gives you what you want. Then, he breaks that motherfucker down and builds it back up again with a series of jams where he finally gives himself the chance to show-off. He’s pushing sounds of out his synthesizer that I just haven’t heard before. Total Emerson vibes here.

Side A of the album continues with two more pieces from Star Wars “Princess Leia’s Theme” and “The Robot Auction” that are also good. However, side B takes things in a different direction. Just like Meco did on his album, the second side of Shoji’s Star Wars album features original work by Shoji, not interpretations of music from the film. Of course, it doesn’t hold the attention like the Star Wars stuff does, but it’s still great. Shoji wasn’t just a musician, he was an extremely talented composer. He worked on countless anime during his lifetime. He also released several albums of original work (that are all super-fun).

The majority of Side B is dedicated to just one piece, the 20-minute “Space Odyssey.” As the title suggests, it’s an odyssey. It starts as a quiet, simple instrumental melody. From there, the synth strings segue in and things get downright sexy before a more eerie sound takes itself to the forefront for a pulsing, sci-fi influenced second half. The album concludes with “The Desert,” a brief coda that features Shoji at his most experimental, mixing ambient soundscapes, some elements of Williams’ score, and odd atonal bursts of noise. (It’s also the only part of the record where the surface noise is noticeable so I apologize about that).

I’m glad to see that this record is getting a bit more attention now. I hope that anyone interested in it checks out other work by Shoji. Like I said in my blog post about him, I highly recommend his album Night Flight, which also came out in 1978. It’s a fun, bright and upbeat record that isn’t afraid to get a little silly at times.  It’s groovy as hell too.

Happy New Year’s everyone! May this be the year that we finally realize that we’re not alone and that we can make a different when we all come together against a common enemy.

Yeah, I really liked the ending to Rise of the Skywalker, is it that obvious?

Posted in Complete Albums, Osamu Shoji, Star Wars | 5 Comments »

Best Of The Biscuit – Missing Persons

December 27th, 2019

I overindulged after finishing my last day of work before a two-and-a-half week vacation and now I’m nursing a hangover and dealing with the regret of consuming a heroic amount of whiskey while watching the Masters of the Universe movie with Dolph Lundgren.

I never said I was a role model.

Best Of The Biscuit – Missing Persons

Missing Persons are not good hangover music.

This is the second part of the August 7th, 1983 Best Of The Biscuit radio show. The first part, which was a Thomas Dolby concert, can be found here.

I’m not a Missing Persons enthusiast, so I can’t speak to what die-hard fans would want to find on a Missing Persons’ concert from 1983. Speaking as someone who probably owned their first album at some point (just seems like something I should have bought), I can say that I’m very happy with this short, six song set. We get “Words,” “Destination Unknown,” and the immortal “Walking In LA.” In addition to those all-time classics, the group also performs the bangers “Mental Hopscotch” and “I Like Boys,” which I had never heard before and wish I had so I could’ve put it on a slutty playlist back when I was single (somewhere between Lady Gaga’s “Do What You Want With My Body” and an electro-punk cover of “Boys Boys Boys”). Also here is “Windows,” another lesser-known (to me anyways) piece that’s very good.

I’m once again including the commercials, which are sadly still mostly Army bullshit, with an ad for Honda at the very end. At the end of this side there’s a bit more though. You get some production credits for the show, followed by two 30 second promos for the program. One of them features commentary by an announcer, while the other is just the musical clips playing. I assume the latter is there so local radio stations could put their own DJs on the ad if they so desired.

Happy new year! And stay safe this New Year’s. Don’t drink an entire bottle of whiskey and sure as hell don’t watch Masters of the Universe.

Posted in Missing Persons | No Comments »

Best Of The Biscuit – Thomas Dolby

December 19th, 2019

Best Of The Biscuit – Thomas Dolby
Right after I bought and wrote about a radio-only LP live show compilation called Live Tracks, I just happened to stumble upon another one at an entirely different record store. While the previous radio show I bought seemingly a derivative of the King Biscuit Flower Hour, this one is the real deal, a “best of” episode that originally the aired the week of August 7th, 1983. Split into two parts, the majority of the episode is dedicated to a Thomas Dolby concert, while the later bit showcases a few songs from a Missing Persons show. Since there’s so much content here, I’m splitting this into two posts, with the Thomas Dolby up first.

This is not a complete show unfortunately. If Discogs is any indication, King Biscuit broadcasted a more complete (if not entirely complete) version of this very same concert on May 3rd of the same year, just a few months before this “best of” version. That’s some quick repackaging! They might have even repackaged it once more for another program in the following year, or that could just be another Dolby show, hard to say.

Nearly everything Dolby performs here is from his 1983 debut album, or from assorted singles (that would eventually make their way into various permutations of said debut album – it’s been re-issued a lot). The sole exception is “New Toy,” which is a song that Dolby wrote for Lene Lovich for her debut EP. Lene Lovich actually joins Dolby on stage for this one. I have no idea how rare live performances with both of them are for this one, maybe they toured together and played it all the time, or this was a one-off special appearance. Regardless, it’s cool.

Just like the last radio show I shared, this too has commercials. Unfortunately, this time around they aren’t horribly inappropriate beer commercials that feature racist stereotypes and encourage underage drinking. Instead, they’re just commercials for the US Army (boo!). I remember these commercials though, so while I won’t say that it was cool to hear them again (again, boo military-industrial complex!) it did trigger a nostalgia dopamine response. Haven’t heard that “be all that you can be” jingle in ages. It’s also hilarious to me that the army sponsored a radio show with the aggressively anti-imperialist “One Of Our Submarines Is Missing.”

Also, how many die-hard synthpop fans from the early 80s were down with the thought of joining the armed forces? I feel that the military’s advertising budget could’ve been better spent on radio shows featuring AC/DC or Ted Nugent.

Enjoy the show (this one is “properly” numbered by the way) and, for those of you who celebrate Christmas, merry Christmas. I’ll be back next week with the second half of this radio show, hopefully.

Posted in Thomas Dolby | 8 Comments »

Switched On East – Electronic Japanese Tunes

December 11th, 2019

Masahiko Satoh
Switched On East (Complete Album Download)

I have accumulated many (many many) Japanese synthesizer albums from the 1970s over the past few years. Finding out anything about any of these releases in English is often impossible. Many times I have to  enter these items into Discogs myself. Which is a real pain in the ass when the majority of the liner notes are in kanji. Thankfully, this one was already there.

Switched-On East is the earliest example of a Japanese electronic/synthesizer album that I’ve come across. It was released by Denon Records in 1971. To the best of my knowledge, it never received a release in any other country, which makes sense. The album is comprised of nothing but covers of songs by Japanese composers. I’m going to guess that the international market for something like that was pretty slim at the time.

The album was arranged and performed on synthesizer by Masahiko Satoh, who for some reason chose to work under the name M Sato for this release. Satoh is a very prolific composer and jazz pianist in Japan, with dozens of albums to his name ranging from experimental electronic pieces like this, to more traditional jazz recordings. He gets around, I’ve ended up owning six albums that feature him, despite the fact that I’m not really into jazz. He shows up where you least expect him.

He’s the Spanish Inquisition of Japanese jazz pianists.

While Satoh is a brilliant composer and fantastic pianist, I don’t think that he really knew his way around a synthesizer in 1971. Or if he did, he wasn’t fully aware of how to properly take advantage of it in a studio environment. This is a very good record, but, like many similar albums that would be released in the 1970s, his interpretations of these tracks are a little bare bones when compared to the stuff that Wendy Carlos was doing at the same time. Carlos would put forth the effort to really layer her arrangements to make them sound as big and complex as possible. But that took a lot of time (and skill). Early synths were entirely monophonic. Anytime you hear layering or chorus effects, that means that the performer had to go back, record those parts separately, and edit them in later. In the days before digital editing software, that meant a lot of tape. It was probably a real pain in the ass. Carlos should be commended for her patience just as much as her technical ability.

I’m not familiar with most of these tunes outside of this album. I don’t know if Satoh took any major liberties with the source material or if they’re just 100% accurate arrangements that happened to be performed on a synthesizer. Regardless, I enjoy listening to them. They’re sparse, that’s for sure, but that gives many of them an almost ethereal quality. “Sunayama” is downright haunting. Others, like “Yashi No Mi” are bouncy and fun, and their minimal nature give them a video game music vibe, some 10 years before that was even a thing.

This album was never released on CD or digitally (as far as I can tell) and I don’t think that the record was pressed more than once. And from what I can gather, most of the ones that were pressed don’t sound good. Every auction I’ve come across for this record by someone who has actually listened to it seems to echo the same sentiment: “It looks perfect, but sounds a bit scratchy.”

I can certainly attest to that. Despite the fact that my copy looks flawless, and despite the fact that I’ve given it multiple cleanings, parts of it still sound a little scratchy. Since I’m a self-hating perfectionist, I usually don’t share my rips unless they’re near-perfect, but considering the rarity of this record I made an exception.

As I said before, I have a lot of records like this (seriously, it’s a problem). So expect more like them in the future. I hope to get some more complex write-ups done on some of the more interesting ones during my holiday break.

And if you like this, be sure to check out this post from a few months back, where I share something similar by Hideki Matsutake, a synth legend.

 

Posted in Complete Albums, Masahiko Satoh | 7 Comments »

Listen to 1998’s remix of 1999 in 2019

December 3rd, 2019

Some news first. I plan on updating my ridiculously huge guide to Tokyo record stores in the coming month or so, with updated photos and added profiles of various stores that I recently discovered. I plan on making this new guide so big that I’ll probably end up breaking it into two parts; one a “best of” highlight reel, and the other a full-fledged “here’s everything” guide that will be well over 15,000 words. If anyone has any suggestions about what they would like to see in either, let me know.

Now, Prince.

Prince
1999 (The New Master)
Rosario (1999)
1999 (The Inevitable Mix)
1999 (Keep Steppin’)
1999 (Rosie & Doug E. In A Deep House)
1999 (The New Master Edit)
1999 (Acapella)
The 1999 super deluxe box set is out and I highly recommend it, even though I haven’t been able to dive into everything that it has to offer. It is five CDs (and a DVD) after all. I haven’t touched much of the live content or archival remixes/edits all that much, I’ve been far more interested in the vault tracks, many of which are downright fantastic. The estate really did a good job with this one, populating those bonus discs with a good mix of legit, finished tracks that just didn’t make the cut; polished demos and raw takes that sound damn good; and a smattering of live cuts that show Prince playing around with his material on the fly in a fun and interesting way. Great shit all around. If you have any interest in Prince’s 80s output at all, it’s a must buy. I’m sure that the die-hard Prince bootleg collectors out there will find holes in it, and have their own “unreleased” material that they would prefer, but I’m not in that scene so I can remain happily ignorant of what I missed.

The above remixes were not included in the 1999 box set, although they really had no right to be. They were released in 1998 as an effort to capitalize on the literal 1999. These remixes arrived with a thundering thud when they came out, failing to make any substantial impact on the charts in damn near every country.

That makes sense on a few levels. The most obvious being that the world did not need a new version of “1999” in 1998, or in any year for that matter. “1999” is a near perfect song, no “new master,” remix, or any other attempt to rejigger or rework it for a modern audience would be a success, in my opinion. Remember that when “1999” first came out, there were no 12″ or dance remixes of it. The only alternate versions of the original track are radio edits. Prince knew he didn’t need to fuck with it then, he should’ve known not to fuck with it in 1998.

But I think that’s not the only reason why these mixes bombed. I think a lot of it has to do with the song itself. Think about the song “1999” in 1982, there could not be a song that was more in tune with the zeitgeist of the time, not only musically (synths galore) but musically (Ronnie’s gonna nuke the world). In 1999, there couldn’t not be a song more out of touch with the state of reality than the song “1999.” The Cold war was over, compared to the periods immediately before and following, the world was relatively at peace. America was in the middle of a ridiculous bubble economy. The internet was bringing us together in fun and exciting ways, as opposed to the sad and depressing ways it does now. Everybody loved the president. Apolitical was a thing you could be.

This showed in the music of the era. Look at the top songs of 1999, they’re dumb as rocks. The biggest song of that year was “Believe” by Cher. Sugar Ray was one of the biggest rock bands in the world. The closest thing to a song with a message reaching mainstream popularity was “Jumper” by Third Eye Blind.

Compare that to 1983 (when “1999” actually charted). Sure there’s a multitude of stupid shit there, but the number one song of the year was “Every Breath You Take” (which some read as a statement on nuclear proliferation) and there were other dark songs that managed to be big hits as well, like “Maniac,” “Dirty Laundry, and “Twilight Zone.” Yeah, these aren’t political or “serious” songs, but they have an edge to them. There wasn’t no edge or commentary in the popular music of 1999. That shit was polished to a happy sheen.

Of course, the pop hits of 1999 (and 1983) blow most pop hits of 2019 out of the water, since they actually have things like melodies, hooks, and emotions aside from “I’m sad about stuff.” Yowza what a shitty year for pop music this turned out to be. But that’s a whole other topic and I don’t want to write another 1,000 words that’ll just piss 20 year-olds off (I do that enough already).

Okay I got sidetracked. These mixes aren’t…well…they aren’t bad. Okay, a few of them are bad. Like, downright bad. About half of them aren’t even mixes of “1999.” “Rosario” is just Rosario Dawson rambling on for a minute or so, and a couple of other mixes are just excuses for Rosie and Doug E. Fresh to freestyle. But the main remix is actually pretty good, and the edited version is a good abbreviated version of that. The others are good enough, and are worth a listen just of out curiosity if nothing else.

Posted in Complete Albums, Prince, remixes | 4 Comments »

Owner of a Lonely REMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIX

November 17th, 2019

Yes
Owner Of A Lonely Heart (Wonderous Mix)
Owner Of A Lonely Heart (2 Close To The Edge Mix)
Owner Of A Lonely Heart (Not Fragile Mix)
Ever buy something that just leaves you confused about how the world works?

These remixes are from a CD single that I found  last week. It has left me with so many questions that will forever remain unanswered that I don’t even know where to begin with writing about it.

Why does this exist?
Who thought the world wanted remixes of “Owner of a Lonely Heart?”
Who thought that the world wanted remixes of “Owner of a Lonely Heart” in 1991?
Was this the part of a larger remix project that fell through?
What Yes fans in 1991 would be interested in dance remixes of Yes?
Who are those people and what drugs were they taking?
Did any club DJ in the world actually play these remixes for a dance audience?
Was said club DJ immediately killed for such a transgression?
Why the hell didn’t they recruit The Orb for this?
Why the hell did they recruit 808 State for this (yes really)?
Why the hell did 808 State say yes (to Yes)?

Those last two questions are the most pressing for me. Two of the three remixes on this single were done by 808 State. Not only that, at the time 808 State were at the absolute peak of their popularity and critical acclaim, coming right off the release of the ex:el album the same year. I assume that Trevor Horn, who produced this single, was responsible for getting  808 State and was able to do so because both he and 808 State were on ZTT Records at the time.

It’s funny how just one person can serve to be a connection between two acts that are so widely disparate in every way possibly imaginable. Trevor Horn is the Kevin Bacon of music, and not just in terms of artists he’s worked with, but in genres he’s crossed as well. You could probably connect a zydeco artist to a breakbeat DJ within six degrees by using Trevor Horn as a connecting point.

But of course, the most important question; are these remixes any good?

And to that I can firmly say; I dunno? Kinda? I guess?

They’re okay. The Wonderous Mix is very ambient and chill. It actually sounds like what I think a remix of Yes by The Orb would sound like. Most of it is original production and instrumentation that uses Anderon’s vocals and the guitar solo from the original tune as an accompaniment. It’s chill. I dig it.

Things radically switch gears for the 2 Close To The Edge Mix, which sounds less like a remix to “Owner of a Lonely Heart” and more like an original 808 State song that has a few samples of “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” If I heard this without knowing it where it was from, I would have never guessed the source material. It’s such a drastic deviation. It’s not terrible. If you dig this era of acid house then you’ll probably dig it. It’s just weird.

The Not Fragile Mix, on the other hand, doesn’t fuck around in letting you know that it’s a remix of “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” It doesn’t have the same structure or flow as the original, but elements from it are all over the thing. When the song’s signature guitar riff isn’t playing, you’re getting snippets of Jon Anderson’s vocals or quick explosions of the song’s notable synthesized sound effects.

Strangely (sadly), this is not the only Yes remix release. In 2002, Yes released the entirely unrelated Yes Remixes album. An even more baffling affair, that album tried to turn classic Yes prog anthems like “Starship Trooper” and “Heart Of The Sunrise” into standard techno bangers. I mean, say what you will about the remixes I’m sharing tonight, they’re not the greatest idea in the world, but at least the source material lends itself to remixes in theory. “Owner of a Lonely Heart” is a synthpop track. Synthpop tracks are remixed all the time into club-ready dance tunes.

Hella complex prog rock is not.

That album is a complete disaster in all the ways you might imagine (and then some). However, I at least I understand how that came into being. The remixes on that album were by The Verge aka Virgil Howe aka the son of Yes guitarist Steve Howe. Good old fashion nepotism giving the world something it never asked for yet again.

I assume that Yes Remixes is long out of print but don’t hold your breath for me to share that here. I like you all way too much to subject you to that.

Posted in 808 State, Yes | No Comments »

Takkyu Ishino’s techno soccer remix

November 10th, 2019

Vangelis
Anthem [Orchestra version with choral introduction]
Anthem [Synthesizer Version]
Anthem (JS Radio Edit)
Anthem [Takkyu Ishino Remix]
Anthem [Takkyu Ishino Remix Radio Edit]
I’m a stupid American so I don’t know anything about “football” and the World Cup (aside from it being horribly corrupt, complacent in countless human rights violations, and vehemently anti-LGTBQ), so could someone tell me, are World Cup themes/songs a “thing?” Meaning, do people care about them at all? Are they played at the games? Is it a big deal when an artist announces they are involved in one?

I’m guessing no?

The above track is from the 2002 World Cup, which was co-hosted by Japan and South Korea. You would think that FIFA would’ve wanted South Korean and Japanese musicians to perform the theme to that games. It could have been a powerful moment, two countries with such a contentious relationship, working together to communicate via the international language of music. Or at the very least you would’ve hoped they called Ryuichi Sakamoto because duh.

Instead they got Vangelis.

I hope it was because someone at FIFA was a big Aphrodite’s Child fan and not because of “Chariots of Fire.”

Usually naming a song “Anthem” is a sign that a musician has their head up their ass (looking at you, Good Charlotte) but since this was literally an anthem to an actual event, it gets a pass. It also sounds anthemic as fuck. It earns the name. Those soaring riffs, that chorus, this is a song custom-made to be rousing like a motherfucker. I close my eyes, listen to this and I can imagine a highlight reel of…I dunno, whatever soccer players do to earn themselves on highlight reels. (Successful flops? Ignored penalties? Abiding the poorly implemented offside rule?) Even without the techno remixes, I would dig this tune. It goes on my workout playlist for sure, right next to “No Easy Way Out” from Rocky IV.

Of course, my interest in this track has absolutely zero to do with any interest in soccer (again, stupid American) or the World Cup (again, horribly corrupt to the point of being cartoonishly evil). I bought it because of Takkyu Ishino’s remix. Ishino is a member of Denki Groove, a Japanese dance/techno act that I love. He also did a great remix of New Order’s fantastic track “Tutti Frutti” a few years back, and in the 90s he contributed a fantastic song to the dope-as-fuck soundtrack to the shitty-as-hell PS1 Ghost In The Shell video game. Ishino is old-school techno, and I mean techno as an actual genre of music not as a blanket word for “electronic music.” If you like your dance music robotic and high-energy, give his stuff a listen. His remix here is fantastic. I liked it so much that, after buying one single that only included a radio edit of the remix, I did a Discogs impulse buy and bought another single that included the full remix, which is even better than the edit. Them techno beats always get me.

And don’t forget that FIFA aided in the murder of thousands of people.

Posted in remixes, Takkyu Ishino, Vangelis | 4 Comments »

Live Tracks, brought to you by Grizzly Beer

November 4th, 2019

Live Tracks #2
In the above zip, you get live performances of:
Duran Duran – Rio
Fleetwood Mac  – Hypnotized
Romantics – Talking In Your Sleep
The Who – Behind Blue Eyes
Yes – I’ve Seen All Good People
Steve Miller Band – Fly Like An Eagle

Plus beer commercials! Let me explain.

Syndicated radio shows pressed to vinyl for national distribution are something that I sadly do not know much about. They aren’t the kind of records that one tends to easily find in used record stores (especially in Japan). That’s because they were never intended for any kind of commercial release, especially on the second-hand market. When one of these makes it to a used record store or online, I always wonder how it got out into the wild. Maybe a radio station unloaded its vinyl library without bothering to sort out the promos? Or perhaps a DJ snagged a personal copy for their own private collection, and they ended up selling it years later? Or maybe someone just stole it and sold it for cash. Who knows? And who knows how this one made its way to a tiny store outside of Ikebukuro in Japan?

Live Tracks was a syndicated radio program produced by DIR Broadcasting, perhaps most famous for their King Biscuit Flower Hour show. While King Biscuit featured complete (or near-complete) live concerts, Live Tracks was more of a sampler, a bite-sized one-song radio program with a single cut from a live concert. I suspect that a lot of the performances on Live Tracks were just repackaged performances taken from DIR’s substantial back catalog of King Biscuit shows. The radio host on these episodes doesn’t really go exactly when and where the recordings were taken from. Sometimes he gives rough dates (the Duran Duran show was recorded in Madison Square Garden in 1984), but other times he just says something like “here’s an old one…” so pinning down exact information on the songs is tricky. Pinning down much of anything on this show was hard, this episode wasn’t even on Discogs until I added it.

The live tracks of Live Tracks are quite good, recorded professionally and mixed well. Some sound a bit raw, but they capture the energy of a concert well. Just as interesting to me, however, is the wrapping that each episode comes in. The Live Tracks records were complete radio shows on disc. The DJ didn’t have to do anything other than drop the needle and let the show play. The band introductions are handled by DIR’s own emcee, and the LP even has its own commercials included.

For the episodes included on this LP, the sponsor is Grizzly Beer, a long-gone Canadian beer brand who apparently had a penchant for horribly inappropriate commercials. One features comments about college kids drinking beer, another drops in some absolutely cringe-inducing Asian stereotypes, and one even makes jokes about minors getting drunk on Grizzly. Holy shit that wouldn’t fly today.

Since an episode of Live Tracks is really just one song, radio stations got a lot of bang for their buck with each LP. This one features six episodes, each with an intro by the emcee followed by a Grizzly Beer commercial, another bit by the emcee, a complete song performance, and an outro by the host.

Given the format of the show, I had a hard time figuring out how to share it here tonight. I thought about just feature the live cuts, but then you’d lose a lot of the flavor of the beer commercials (which are seriously great). Also, the live cuts often fade in and out with the host, so it would be jarring to not to include them. So, I just went ahead and made the entire thing one zip file, cutting up each episode into separate tracks. I figured y’all would be just as interested in the historical wrappings of the episodes as I was. For the most part, the recordings sound good. There are few crackles here and there, a tiny bit of distortion at the very end of the Steve Miller track, but as a whole, these are well-recorded performances on a damn clean slab of wax.

Enjoy, and if you find a bottle of Grizzly Beer, for God’s sake don’t drink it, that thing is probably 30 years old.

 

Posted in Complete Albums, Duran Duran, Fleetwood Mac, Steve Miller Band, The Romantics, The Who, Yes | 6 Comments »

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